Music
I started playing blues and folk music on the acoustic guitar in the third grade. My music trajectory developed in fits and starts. I had a (truncated) music education at Belmont University and played rock guitar throughout Nashville and the midwest during my college years. I ran away from music after that. Four years later I found myself in the belly of a whale, cold and quiet. I escaped by returning to the arts. It meant starting from scratch, this time with 7 strings instead of six.
Living in São Paulo, Brazil, from 2012-2015 allowed me to study Brazilian harmonies and rhythms. I had the chance to be mentored by such guitar teachers as Jefferson Motta, Tabajara Belo, and Henrique Neto. This came in addition to the chance to meet and play alongside musicians who are legends of Brazil's musical heritage. This, alongside my academic research on Brazilian music, has allowed me to put together a broad repertoire of tunes in voicings that are at once Brazil's and my own.
My own repertoire includes tunes from four styles: bossa nova, instrumental chorinho from the 1920s, the popular MPB tunes of the 1970s, and samba de raiz (roots samba) featuring intricate 7-string counterpoint bass work to anchor down those complex melodies of voices that kept pushing and kept speaking, even when everything seemed lost.
Forgive the old videos here below.
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